“It felt as if in this house the bathroom was never used. In the tarnished mirror over the sink—what wan, greenish lights there were everywhere in the house!—was the reflection of the low ceiling covered with cob-webs, and of my own body in the brilliant threads of water, trying not to touch the dirty walls, standing on tiptoe in the grimy porcelain tub.”
Upon publication, this novel was not exactly greeted with enthusiasm by many people in Barcelona or those natives of the city who had moved elsewhere. Descriptions such as this example—which run rampant through the narrative—were viewed negatively as presenting a distasteful representation of the people there since the perspective being presented is analogous to Spanish outsider coming to the city from a “better” cultural background. Close scrutiny of the text, however, reveals that Andrea is not intended to be a symbolic figure in any broad sense. This passage is not simply a description of an unpleasant house, but one that directly impacts the narrator on a very personal level. The specificity of how the garish lighting is reflecting off her own body ties her viscerally to the ceiling flush with spider webs and the grime darkening the tub. This novel is an example of the general known as Bildungsroman: it is a coming-of-age story about the protagonist. In fact, it is possible to find copies of the novel under the title “Andrea.” That alternative title seems a much more appropriate fit for a story that is comprehensively concerned with a singular perspective and life story.
“From that moment Ena was more powerful than me; she enslaved me, she subjugated me. She made me marvel at her vitality, her strength, her beauty. As she grew, I looked at her with the same astonishment I’d feel if I saw all my unfulfilled longings growing in one body. I had dreamed of health, of energy, of the personal success that had been denied me, and I watched them develop in Ena from the time she was very little.”
This particular passage occurs in the middle of a section of the novel that basically amounts to an extended monologue by the mother of an important character named Ena. Comprising one entire chapter spanning the length of ten pages, the narrator’s intrusion into the monologue is limited to very short question or guiding comments. The bulk is made up of the mother relating elements of her past and explicating the motivation behind her daughter taking up with an older man. It is eventually revealed that the daughter’s seduction of the older man is merely a ploy designed to enact vengeance upon the man who had actually been romantically involved with Ena’s mother many years before. This quote is illuminating for two reasons. Most immediately, the personal nature of it reveals a common structural threat unifying the episodic quality of the narrative: the title’s English translation to “nothing” is partially a commentary on the absence of center to Andrea as anything other than an observer of other people’s trials and tribulation. The passage is also useful for illuminating how the specific events of the novel are tied to the thematic overview of the story taking place in Spain of Franco’s fascist takeover which sought to enslave and subjugate the weak in a way that they would come to admire the strength of their oppressors.
“I went down the stairs slowly. I felt a strong emotion. J remembered the terrible expectation, the longing for life, when I had climbed them for the first time. I was leaving now without having known any of the things I had confusedly hoped for: life in its plenitude, joy, deep interests, love, I was taking nothing from the house ‘on Calle de Aribau, At least, that’s what I thought then.”
The novel ends much as it begins. The circular structure of the narrative in which the story begins with Andrew heading off for Barcelona and ends with her leaving the city and heading to Madrid is emblematic of absence referenced in the official title of the book. While it is true that this is a story about Andrea, what is ultimately revealed is that Andrea is at all times just a body which the world around her reflects off. She is figuratively standing in that grimy tub with the cobwebbed ceilings whether she is literally there or not. That addendum to her assertion that she was taking nothing with her from Barcelona—the cryptic part about “that’s what I thought then”—is left unexplained. The suggestion is strongly implied, however, that what she is talking about is her own eventual recognition that at her core, she is only a surface upon which others are reflected. Less strongly suggested is that sense of self is not the exception relegated to Andrea, but the rule for everybody.
